Hi Zigbert, I am using Pmusic 2.4.4 and when I navigate into a folder that contains tracks from several different artists the tracks appear in sequential order, but as soon as I start to choose which track I want, they disappear then come back in order of the alphabetical name of the artist. It is annoying that it changes format just at the moment I am trying to select a song to be transferred into the playlist.

Can I choose to stop the way it re-orders them into an alphabetical list? If possible I would like them to display only in the order that they were recorded from the original CD. Thanks!

Thanks Zigbert. That worked nicely. At first I tried to change the setting and failed - because it will not remember the change while the one of the tracks is playing (I had to stop the playing before changing the settings). I also tried newer versions and I think it is a good idea that the default is now different. Nice work.

A minor progress report
I have started restructure things in pMusic, so I am heading for pMusic 3.

How things will be in the end is not settled yet.
Much is depending on Thunors work with gtkdialog.....
....still some code has reached a usable stage.
Here are sneak peek:

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Place pMusic data outside pupsave.
pMusic are able to build a lot of info/data, and this should not be forced inside the pupsave. This is set in the preferences. A quick check tells me that my pMusic storage is 45MB atm.

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New rating system.
With a lot of help from the community, you can now find popular played tracks last day/week/month or whatever. You can define whatever period.

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Docks.
One of the best features to improve usability is to allow docks in the main gui. The search-options dock is up-and-running, and is controlled from menu or the button in toolbar. New settings is instant saved to rc-file for next run.
Depending on gtkdialog I plan docks for search/sort/add.

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New history index
Every move in the music-source field are now stored into a history index. That means you can undo/redo in music sources (as for playlists today). Navigation buttons in the toolbar.

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Define what should NOT be in the search-result.
Allow leading - (minus) to search-words. This should be seen in relationship to the planned smart-add dock.

Will there be clearly mentioned options for the text and background colors? I find it difficult to make out white or light-colored letters on a black or dark-colored background. Blue or red letters on a black background are the worst, but even white letters on a black background are harder to read than black letters on a white or light background, everything else being the same. Your example above is an excellent test. Start out too far from the screen to make out either panel, then move closer until you can read what's in one of the panels. I'll bet most people can read the black-letters-on-light-green-background from farther away than they can the white letters-on-black-background.

pMusic 3 progress.
In this stage, most of the work is done under-the-hood, so there is not much to show. I rewrites the internal data-flow with some targets in mind:

- The major idea is to let pMusic use the indexed data better AND do this without bothering the user - a dynamic database of trackinfo like meta-tags, stream-info, rating, url to lyircs/albumart. Most users (I asume) give a damn in indexing their music. And that is ok with me. But I still want to offer them better usability. To get this going, pMusic stores whatever data it finds into the index. Next time pMusic can fetch data directly from the database. This work is still ongoing, but much of the main infrastructure is in place. It interferes with every corner of the code, so it pops up 'endless' of bugs.

- The rating system is today separated from the main database, so it is not possible to sort content of sourcelist by rating - like search-result, browsing, .... The first phase of this work is done which include a new rating engine. Next is to integrate is into the main db. Thunor has given us much better sort function in gtkdialog, so now it is only up to me.

- The new structure gives us the possibility to build our own file-format for the playlist. pMusic uses today m3u, and I think we official stick with this because of the compatibility with other players. BUT for internal use, the new *.pmu format will be used. Much faster than m3u. This gives us a new features that I personally have missed in pMusic. - When you play a song, pMusic will find the other tracks in the album that exist on your system. I find this very helpful in combination with the Radio-Hits module (streamripper).

The internal data-flow is mostly in place, and my todo-list is shrinking. Hopefully next time I update progress there will be a test-release.

The big thing about version 3 of pMusic is the new dynamic db, which collects info about your music as you play. At first run it makes a quick scan of your audiofiles, and later adds more flesh to the bone. In the search-result bellow, there are some files not been active yet (played or in a played album), so extended info is missing. It is of course possible to do a complete indexing as in version 1/2.

Also note that rating is no fully integrated into the sourcelist, and since thunor has given us proper sort-functions in gtkdialog, you can click on the column header to sort.

Next, let's take a look at the new album feature. As told earlier, pMusic now scans your audio-files to build a complete playlist file of the album. Next time you search for the album, you also will see the content of the album - because of the already stored *.pmu file. The pmu format is native and therefor extremely fast. The search-result shows a : ( if file is not found.

The new dynamic db/index has made it possible to simplify the setup. The preferences and other modules has become much more user friendly. What was heaps of options and settings in pMusic 2 is now just a few.

The new db structure also makes it possible to improve handling of trackinfo. For example is the URL to the lyrics stored in the db, so at next run it goes straight to the given site. This makes lyrics faster even if NOT stored locally. Therefor, I don't see any reason for pMusic to store anything locally by default. That will be an option for the music collector.

The new dock in the lyrics tab, gives the option to override the default search order if you get a bad result by default.

Album-art and album tab will also get similar features as lyrics.

All in all, there has been done rather much in the trackinfo department. The last pic shows how things are tided up in the stream tab.

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